


319. devoid of color

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [173]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-10 14:16:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8920339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: Sarah goes to visit Helena at the DYAD building.





	

**Author's Note:**

> [warning: helena is on some meds and she's not on them consensually]

They let Sarah visit Helena three weeks after Sarah gave her to Leekie. She has to make an appointment – between Helena’s scheduled psychiatric sessions, and her scheduled medical appointments, and her scheduled meals and sleep time and periods of exercise and other brightly-colored blocks on her schedule…there isn’t much time for Sarah. But she manages a window. Twenty minutes. Sarah shows up early, and they give her a nametag. VISITOR. Jesus Christ.

The door to Helena’s room is unlabeled, one blue-grey door in a hallway full of them. Sarah stands outside and knocks, feeling like a second-rate actor in a show she doesn’t want to put on – which isn’t helped by the security guard standing off to the side, attempting to look unobtrusive and failing miserably. Well, he isn’t the only one failing miserably.

Helena opens the door and Sarah just blinks at her.

She shaved her head. Or. Someone shaved her head. Her hair is growing back in a familiar brown, but the lack of it brings out how sharp her cheekbones are and the absence of color in her face. She used to have bright pinks bags under her eyes, Sarah remembers, but they’re gone now. Helena’s eyes are empty as polished marbles.

“Hello Sarah,” Helena says. The words fall out of her mouth with about as much emotion and intonation as an automatic voicemail message. “Thank you for coming to visit. Would you like some tea.”

“Sure,” Sarah says, and this was a mistake. Helena nods at her, a spacey bobbing of the head, and steps outside. She closes the door behind her and it shuts with a final-sounding click; then they’re walking down the hallway, Sarah slowing her pace to match the drag-plod of Helena’s steps. She’s wearing those plastic slippers they give you in hospitals. Her shirt is a white thermal, her pants cotton with an elastic band. She looks like a sleepwalker.

They make their slow way to another blank door, which Helena opens to reveal a kitchen that looks like a stage set. There are no knives in it. The toaster plug looks to be permanently attached to the wall; you can’t take it out. A bouquet of plastic silverware with rounded edges sits in a vase, proud as an ornamentation. Helena puts the kettle on and rummages through the cabinets, procures three separate bright orange bottles. DOE, HELENA is written on each of them. Helena starts putting pills on the counter and Sarah doesn’t even know what to say – how does she bring any spark of color here? How does she say sorry to an automaton?

How does she—

She had brought Helena to Leekie and then come home to her birth mother sitting in a chair in her living room. One to the state, one to the church. Helena straining against Sarah’s grip, _please don’t give me to them, please take me, I’ll be good, I’m sorry, I love you, please_ —

“Do you want any sugars,” Helena says. Stops. Blinks at herself, rapidly, like she’s been slapped. “Sugar. Sorry. I am still learning English.”

“No thanks,” Sarah says. “It’s fine.” She sits down at one of the chairs; she can’t pull it out very far, because it’s been chained to the table. Helena fills their mugs and sits down across from Sarah. She doesn’t take sugar in her tea either. The line of pills Helena has moved to the tabletop glare at Sarah like an accusation.

“Helena,” Sarah says. “How – how are you? Are you okay?” Selfish question. She wants Helena to say _yes_ , so that she’ll have something to cling to on the long drive home. _Yeah_ , she’ll say to Siobhan, _she looks really good, thank god she’s getting help, she’s doing so much better_. She’ll be a liar.

“I don’t know,” Helena says, staring at the table. “I wasn’t. I think. I don’t remember very much anymore.” Her gaze drags up to Sarah and sticks somewhere to the left of her eyes. “That’s good. Remembering hurts. Now I just float. I’m a very good patient, everyone says so. They give me lollipops sometimes.” Her gaze wanders off, moving without any particular purpose. Sarah imagines grabbing her face and yanking it towards Sarah, making Helena’s eyes _move_. Instead she looks down at her hands, watches her fingers tug desperately at each other.

“Well,” she says, a stupid word with no purpose. “Do you think you’re gonna be – finished? Soon?”

“No,” Helena says dreamily. “I am going to stay here for the rest of my life.” She doesn’t seem very sad about this concept; she doesn’t seem very much of anything. She raises her mug to her lips and just holds it there, for a second, like she’s forgotten how to take a sip. Tea dribbles down the skin of her face, her chin, her throat; it beads into the collar of her shirt and stains it brown. Sarah sits there and waits for Helena to notice, but Helena just sits there. She just keeps on not noticing.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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